A/N: I know I'm an infamous glutton for Jibbs angst, but Shannon/Gibbs really is my one and only; it's just tugs at my heart like nothing else really can. Here are some drabbles about Shannon's rules, and the side of Gibbs that was hers and hers alone. Funnily enough, this was inspired by a line in LBSF, though this is utterly unrelated to that universe.
This isn't sad. But oh is it fluffy.
Dialogue taken from 'Heartland'.
He had a lot on his mind, leaving this small town and all he'd ever known behind, but all he could really focus on was the pretty girl smiling at him from the other side of the bench, waiting for the same bus he was.
She was saying she was glad he wasn't a lumberjack, and he didn't know what to think about that, except her eyes were really blue and her hair was really long and red and he liked the way her voice sounded when she talked.
"Well, I have a rule. It's either one, or number three: Never date a lumberjack."
Had she had a bad experience with a lumberjack?
"You have a rule for everything?" he asked.
"Workin' on it," she said, smiling genuinely again. "Everyone needs a code they can live by. What's your name?" she asked.
Her hand moved lightly on the bench and she tilted her head, waiting serenely for him to answer. He cleared his throat, still a little star-struck that she was so easy to talk to.
"Leroy Jethro Gibbs," he said, giving his name like he always did, with a little wince—because it was a stupid name.
She lowered her lashes thoughtfully, pressing her lips together.
"I'm just gonna call you Gibbs," she decided.
"You can call me anything you want," he said earnestly, leaning towards her a little.
She beamed, her eyes lighting up, and a dimple appearing in her cheek.
"I'm Shannon," she said.
It was the first he'd ever heard of her code to live by, and she told him later on the bus ride that never date a lumberjack was in fact rule number three.
"Hey," he mumbled groggily into her hair, tangled up on her apartment couch with her, cuddled up in blankets to ward off the harsh winter.
"Hay is for horses," she said back with a soft laugh.
"Shannon," he said instead, mumbling into her hair again. "What's rule number one?"
Because he'd learned Rule Forty-Four today (hide the women and children!) and Rule Seven (No coffee after seven unless you were up before six!) and it suddenly occurred to him that she wasn't going in order when she hit him with this stuff out of the blue.
"I don't know," Shannon answered contently.
"You don't know?" he retorted, looking down at her. He raised an eyebrow. "They're your rules," he accused.
She turned and looked up at him, rubbing his foot with hers.
"I take them as they come, Jethro," she murmured thoughtfully. He was only Gibbs to her in public now. He was Jethro when they were alone. "When I think of them, they already have their number attached."
"How many are there?" Gibbs asked skeptically.
"However many I need," she replied calmly.
Shannon reached up and touched his face, her thumb running over his lips.
"Nothin's important enough for number one yet?" Gibbs asked curiously.
"Not yet," she agreed with a shrug. She slipped her hand to his neck and pulled his mouth towards hers.
She kissed him, snuggling closer sleepily.
"Rule Seventeen is never say no to a kiss after midnight," she whispered.
He found out Rule Twenty-Three (melted Hershey's over popcorn fixes everything!) when she was having an awful day; a flat tire in the morning, a fight with her mother, an awful grade on an exam, a pulled calf muscle—and it was raining.
She was sitting next to him on the bench outside the Quantico barracks, protected from the rain by a parka, holding a container of the treat in her lap. She popped a piece into her mouth.
"She thinks I'm throwing my life away," Shannon said, frustrated.
Another tear fell down her cheek and she swallowed, looking over at him. She wiped at her eyes, but her hand was wet, and she just sighed and shook her head. He put his arm around her and hugged her to his side. She sniffled.
"I don't understand why she thinks a Marine is so beneath me," Shannon said tearfully.
She reached for another handful of popcorn.
"She thinks I'm too young to be in love, but if I can drink, I can love, can't I?" Shannon shook her head, and ate some more of her comfort food. She reached over and grabbed his hand on her shoulder. "Don't take what she says to heart, Jethro," she pleaded.
He kissed the side of her head lingeringly and let his forehead rest against hers.
"I'll come over later," he said gruffly. He reached into her container and stole some chocolaty popcorn. "We'll make more."
She squeezed his hand tighter, and he got a smile out of her.
Rule Five (don't hesitate!) he learned when he proposed, and he was so nervous he couldn't get the words out, he was just there on bended knee holding a simple black jewelry box, and she blurted it out at him-Rule Five!-and then before he could manage to ask—
"Yes!" she said, and she took the ring box and then pushed his hand away and sat on his knee.
She gasped when she saw it and dropped its box in her haste to get it on her finger and admire it.
"I want an October wedding," she said, whirling to face him, and setting them off balance, and he fell backwards and she came with him—she grabbed for his shoulder with a laugh to break the fall, and that diamond he'd been saving so long to buy her left a cut on his bottom lip.
"I have to go to Cuba in October," he said, distress flashing in his eyes—what if he couldn't give her the wedding she'd dreamed of?
But she didn't miss a beat; she didn't hesitate.
"Okay," she said breathlessly, kissing the cut on his lip lightly, "I want a wedding whenever you can be there."
When he finally did learn Rule One, he wasn't expecting it at all. He was too busy focusing on the pretty woman smiling at him with March sunshine in her hair and wedding glitter in her eyes.
She was saying her vows, and he could hardly believe what to think about that, except that she'd never looked more beautiful, and he still couldn't believe he'd gotten through his vows without making a complete stuttering fool of himself.
He was thinking she was holding his hand as tight as he was holding hers, and he still liked the way her voice sounded when she talked, just as much as he'd liked it at the bus station the day they'd met.
"…you asked me what Rule 1 was, and I didn't know. And since then, I've changed my mind. I never told you this, but for a long time now, it's been never let him know how much he means to you. It's always scared me, how much you mean to me. But I was going over my vows last night, and I realized it's not about me anymore. Everything is about us, and these rules are our rules now. Even the silly ones, like Rule Twenty,"
She paused, and her mischievous smile lit up her face. She waited; he cleared his throat.
"Never leave the house without brushing your teeth," he supplied gruffly; obediently.
The congregation laughed, and she bit her lip proudly, and continued:
"It's our code to live by. I realized that, and I wasn't scared. I never had cold feet. I just grabbed a notepad, and I wrote down rule one. The most important one, the one that's been there since you told me I could call you anything I want. Don't ever stop loving me, Gibbs. That's the golden rule. But there's a catch. It's a two-parter. Don't stop loving me, and I'll never stop loving you—"
He reached out and slipped his hands to her neck and kissed her, cementing the vows, refusing to wait for the minster to tell him he could kiss her. There was a murmur of surprise from the audience, and some laughter, but he just kissed her, and she threw her arms around his neck and smiled.
He pulled away a little, and smirked, and kissed her temple, and he hugged her—the pretty, blue-eyed redhead who completely blindsided him on a bench eight years ago.
"I won't stop," he said in her ear, so no one else could hear.
She laughed and leaned back, touching his face. She put her pointer finger on his lip where her engagement ring had once cut him and looked up, meeting his eyes.
"I'd love you even if you were a lumberjack," she whispered.
He kissed her again, and in everything that happened after, he never broke that most important rule.
I usually pick ships for whom it is so difficult to write things that are cute/light/fun. This is obviously a heartbreaking story because we know how it ends...but I can't stay away.
-Alexandra
*Fun fact: Rule Number 20 is actually practiced by my room mate.